


Magic Mirror, On The Wall

by ladydragon76



Category: Transformers - All Media Types, Transformers Generation One
Genre: M/M, Warning: violence, character: sunstreaker, character: tracks, character: wheeljack, genre: dark, genre: humor, rating: R - Freeform, verse: g1
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-22
Updated: 2015-05-22
Packaged: 2018-03-31 16:42:34
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,539
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3985348
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ladydragon76/pseuds/ladydragon76
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><b>Summary:</b> Don’t steal stuff from Wheeljack’s lab.  It will only lead to misery.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Magic Mirror, On The Wall

**Author's Note:**

  * For [JoulesBurn](https://archiveofourown.org/users/JoulesBurn/gifts).



> **‘Verse:** G1  
>  **Series:** None  
>  **Rating:** R  
>  **Characters:** Wheeljack, Tracks/Mirror/Sunstreaker  
>  **Warnings:** Violence, Dark Humor  
>  **Notes:** A prompt from joules_burn. The request can be found **[here](http://ladydragon76.livejournal.com/191244.html?thread=3070476#t3070476) **.  
>  **The Prompt:** _Tracks/Mirror/Sunstreaker- Love Triangles are Tough_

How do you turn something completely innocuous into something devastating?

Leave it next to Wheeljack for five minutes, of course.

Wheeljack was used to being the butt of the jokes. In fact, he rather liked it. Pits, he’d cultivated it to the point he could say ‘oops’ and _battlefields_ would clear. He wasn’t nearly as absentminded or careless as most everyone believed him to be, but if a few deliberate, controlled explosions in the lab kept the Decepticons from creeping around a room simply because it was labeled ‘ **WHEELJACK** ’, then all the better.

Unfortunately, there really might have been a higher power in this glitched universe, and it had a _wicked_ sense of humor.

It was just a mirror. A Halloween prop for the party. It was to be hung on the wall in the common room, and when a mech stood before it, it would say, “Famed thy beauty is, but behold! Another is still more fair than thee.” It was a joke. A toy with a simple response to proximity sensors detecting a mech close enough to trigger the words. Nothing more.

So how had the blasted thing become the coveted object in a frelling _war_ between two Autobots?

Gather ‘round, younglings, because this is a tale like no other before or since.

Tracks stumbled upon the mirror when he visited the lab to see if his special wax was ready. No one was there, and rather than wait or comm Wheeljack, Tracks took the more daring route of poking about the lab on his own. To protect it, the mirror was covered with a tarp and hung on the far wall. Tracks removed the drape in a horrible fit of curiosity.

“Famed thy beauty is, but behold! Another is still more fair than thee,” said the mirror.

“Sunstreaker!” Tracks snarled. It was because he didn’t have the right wax. Because it was so hard to find good help to get his back done properly. But Sunstreaker had his twin. Slaggers, the both of them. “You’re coming with me.”

The mirror didn’t know that it should protest being stolen, and wasn’t capable of doing so anyway, so off it was hauled to Tracks’ quarters. It was hung on the wall there, and the mech who did not want to be second prettiest plotted and planned, and finally came up with a devious way to make his rival less beautiful.

It’s exceedingly unpleasant to step out of a nice hot shower and discover one’s finish is a patchy mess of dead and dying, flaky color nanites, and that everywhere the cleanser used touched, is now bare metal. This was why Sunstreaker’s scream of spark-rending terror echoed all the way to Toledo. There were very few mechs that would _dare_ mess around with Sunstreaker’s grooming supplies, and while Sideswipe had the access, he had to recharge next to his twin. There were some pranks even he wouldn’t play.

That left Cliffjumper and Tracks as the major players. Cliffjumper, while his and Sunstreaker’s intense dislike of one another was well known, wasn’t much of a prankster. When he wanted a few extra dents and to work out his aggressions, he just walked up to Sunstreaker and said the golden mech should’ve been a Decepticon. In no time at all Cliffjumper would be grinning in the medbay while Ratchet cursed and popped out his dents, then he would join Sunstreaker in the brig for in-fighting.

Tracks though… No, Tracks and Sunstreaker had _history_ , and Tracks was known for occasionally, quietly, being viperous and cruel. It didn’t happen often, and he rarely targeted anyone other than Sunstreaker with his ire, so it was to his quarters a silver Sunstreaker stomped, black clouds rushing after in his wake.

Tracks wasn’t in his quarters when Sunstreaker ripped the door out of the wall. In fact, he wasn’t even in the _Ark_ , which really was fortunate for him. Unlike the fights with Cliffjumper, this was personal. Sunstreaker stared around the room, trying to find what would wound Tracks as deeply as he had been, and that was when his optics landed on the mirror.

Said the mirror, “Famed thy beauty is, but behold! Another is still more fair than thee.”

Sunstreaker snarled, “Yeah! _Now_! Cuz the frelling bastard stripped my fragging color!” He grabbed the mirror’s frame and yanked, but it came off the wall easily enough. Sunstreaker rightly thought that taking the mirror would upset Tracks, and left with it. He was, of course, too smart to take it back to his room. Sideswipe could get techy about stealing stuff and then leaving it in a place Prowl could easily find.

It wasn’t long before Tracks was in the medbay with a rust infection. Then another.

Ratchet looked up as the medbay door opened, and narrowed his optics when he saw Tracks for the third time that week. “No.”

“I don’t understand,” Tracks whined, fingers scratching hard at the seam along his hip. It _had been_ shiny and buffed to a perfect gloss, but now it was scraped and even slightly dented.

The medic cycled his vents, stared at the ground in a prayer of patience to Primus, then asked, “What have you done in the last twenty-four hours?”

“The same as always,” Tracks replied. He chewed his lip, clearly in pain and still scratching even as Ratchet came to bat his hands away. “My patrol, a wash and wax, then recharge, and I woke this morning feeling fine. I’ve been on monitor duty today, but the itch started to return about twenty minutes ago, and it’s just getting worse!”

Twenty minutes and already this bad? Ratchet looked up at the mech’s red face and teary optics, then stepped back without touching him. “Ok. Decon.” He pointed, and Tracks openly wept as he trudged over to the decontamination chamber.

“I’m going to be hideous!”

“You’ll be fine,” Ratchet said. “Primus already! I have some nanite gel left over from Sunstreaker to help your colors repopulate later, once we’re sure we’ve got you cleaned.” He commed Wheeljack to begin checking for active rust in Tracks’ quarters. If they had somehow gotten Cybertronian rust all over the base, Ratchet and Perceptor were going to be busy with cures. Hopefully, Tracks was just getting into an Earth type rust patch somehow. The medic wasn’t going to start a ship-wide panic though until he knew for sure.

It took Wheeljack no time at all to find the contaminated wax, but when he asked about the damage to Tracks’ wall, then mech’s optics dimmed and he wouldn’t speak but to mutter about Sunstreaker being fairer than him.

Ratchet didn’t know why Wheeljack’s optics went huge and round, nor why he dashed out of the medbay, but within minutes Sideswipe was opening his door to a frantic engineer.

“Hey! Jack! Com’on, mech!” Sideswipe yelped as Wheeljack shoved past him and into the room.

“Where is it?”

“Where’s what?”

“The mirror!” Wheeljack exclaimed. “The one that talks.”

Sideswipe just shook his helm, field open and confused. Wheeljack mumbled curses and hurried back out the door. He pinged Sunstreaker, but he was out on patrol. Wheeljack continued to search for his Halloween prop, but to no avail.

That was until Sunstreaker woke up a few mornings later with a scream, his plating burning in thin lines. **GIVE IT BACK!** was acid etched into his chest plating, and the acid was still eating into the living metal of his plating when Sideswipe dragged him into the medbay.

Only a short while later, sans his acid-etched twin, Sideswipe entered the lab and said, “I know where it is,” startling the Pit out of Wheeljack.

Glass crashed to the floor, but thankfully, it wasn’t anything volatile. “Where wha- Oh! The mirror! Where? Slag me, I’ve been lookin’ high ‘n’ low for it!”

“He can’t know,” Sideswipe said, helm twisting side to side as if expecting someone to jump out at him any second. “Neither of them.”

“Ok…” Wheeljack wiped up the floor, then tossed the broken glass in the bin before gesturing at Sideswipe to lead him to it.

“Oh slag no. Uh uh!” Sideswipe shook his helm. “It’s down two levels in storage eight. I pulled it from Sunny’s head when he was thinking about how this was going to make the mirror _still_ say Tracks looks better than him.”

Wheeljack blinked, helm fins flickering. “But that’s what it does. Doesn’t matter who’s in front of it, it’ll say the same thing. Just like in Snow White.”

“What?” Sideswipe asked, tone going utterly flat.

Wheeljack rubbed the back of his neck. “Yeah. It’s uh… for the Halloween party next week. S’why I’ve been lookin’ everywhere for it. I promised Jazz for his dark fairy tale theme.”

Sideswipe indulged in a serious mug-rub, then spun around and stormed out of the lab.

“And that, kids,” Jazz said brightly, “is why Tracks and the Sunbeam are in the brig instead of here enjoyin’ this groovy Halloween party. Now shoo. Go grab some treats and high grade, and get ta dancin’.”

Beside Jazz, Prowl shook his helm. “You failed to say where the mirror is now.”

Jazz grinned, all teeth and dark amusement. “Why ruin the surprise?”


End file.
